I’ve just returned from a very successful, targeted research trip to Caracas, Venezuela, to consult the city’s Municipal Archive thanks to my Student Research Grant through the Charles Center and the Reves Center for International Studies. Last year as a Fulbright Fellow from 2010-2011, I had a unique and special opportunity to spend nine months conducting the final phase of my dissertation research– investigating the foreign trade of late-colonial Venezuela at the Archivo General de la Nación and the Academía Nacional de la Historia.